OC's Pakistani connection winning hearts

When U.S. military forces killed Osama bin Laden earlier this month, they found him in a private compound near a Pakistani military training school – a fact that has set off a firestorm of questions.

Should we continue giving non-military aid to Pakistan, as we have pledged to do since 2009?

Is Pakistan really an ally in the war against terrorism?

Is Pakistan our friend, or our enemy?

Relations between the two countries have become strained, at least at the highest levels of government.

But on the ground level – in the human to human connections that take place far from seats of power or the attention of the media — there are lessons to be learned in Pakistan about repairing relationships.

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Six years ago, if you had looked at the world through the eyes of a young Pakistani named Afzal Makhdoom, you would have seen America based on cynicism and mistrust.

The America known by Makhdoom (and his friends and family) came to him via what he saw and heard on Pakistani news. The message he heard, he says now, is that America hates Muslims.

"They say it's a crusade...," Makhdoom, 28, tells me via a Skype interview from Islamabad, where he serves as director of operations for Comprehensive Disaster Response Services, a Pakistani-based nonprofit that is related to SHINE Humanity, a health-oriented nonprofit based in Irvine.

"(They say) America wants to invade all the Muslim countries."

When the 2005 Kashmir earthquake hit, killing an estimated 79,000 people and injuring another 106,000, a group of Pakistani-Americans living in Orange County came together to provide disaster relief. SHINE was born from those efforts.

I've been following the organization's work for several years, watching and writing about them as they've shifted focus from short-term, emergency relief to a long-term commitment to provide health care in some of Pakistan's poorest communities.

At the time of the 7.6 magnitude quake, Makhdoom was in college earning his master's degree in business. The son of a school principal, Makhdoom came from a family that emphasized education. But he says he spent much of his time running the streets of Islamabad, picking fights with those who bullied the disadvantaged.

"If I saw someone beating a poor person I would go and pick a fight with them... I was also studying, but that was just a part-time thing. My full time thing was fighting," Makhdoom says, only half joking.

But his days as a rebel troublemaker ended abruptly with the quake.

While helping to pull an aunt out of the rubble, he injured his foot and sought treatment at a medical camp run by Canadians. That's where he met Todd Shea, executive director of Comprehensive Disaster Response Services, who at the time was overseeing his own medical camp.

It was Makhdoom's first encounter with an American. At first, he says, he kept his distance, even rejecting Shea's offer to hire him as an interpreter when the Canadians left. But Shea persisted, tracking him down at a relative's house and asking him to join his team.

"Todd is the only reason I stayed with SHINE," says Makhdoom.

"When I saw Todd working in the community, helping people, that changed my perception of Americans."

Laila Karamally, SHINE Humanity's chief executive, points out that Makhdoom's background and previous behavior – smart but rebellious, even violent – made him ripe to slip to the "other side," as a potential recruit for al Qaeda.

Instead, he's a key part of an organization that last year raised $1 million to help about 4,000 patients a month in clinics, rural hospitals, mobile medical camps and first aid posts.

American foreign aid can be an abstract concept for most of us. But for Makhdoom, the money raised by a children's lemonade stand in Houston, or by bake sales in Westminster, or the $80 in birthday money sent by an 8-year-old, helped to save a child with pneumonia who came in to his hospital near death before being treated by SHINE's staff.

"Those are American dollars at work and American kindness at work and that's the kind of impact we have in these remote communities," Karamally says.

"It's not like they have a fallback. The child would have simply died."

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Such health care victories and partnerships have established a trust of American doctors, nurses and medical staff who have volunteered their time to help Pakistanis rebuild their lives.

"Bringing an army and creating more violence is not the solution," Makhdoom says.

"Building schools, educating those people, giving them health care services — lifting their life into the upper level — is exactly the thing America should be doing."

Makhdoom acknowledges with a laugh that he's left his fighting days behind. He's too busy making sure his patients have a healthy future. As for Americans, his love and appreciation runs deep, especially for one in particular – a SHINE Humanity volunteer doctor, Jennifer Hartley. They married in 2009.

On the ground, where it matters, Pakistani-American relations have never been better.